


was a long and dark december, from the rooftops i remember (there was snow, white snow)

by lavenderandthyme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Natasha Romanov-centric, Red Room (Marvel), canon? who is she, i like LOVE love them, in which the author takes serious artistic liberties, overused snow metaphor warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 15:55:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20392285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderandthyme/pseuds/lavenderandthyme
Summary: In which Natasha breaks another new year's resolution, is still a polyglot, and gets caught in a snowstorm, over and over again.





	was a long and dark december, from the rooftops i remember (there was snow, white snow)

**Author's Note:**

> BuckyNatBuckyNatBuckyNat!
> 
> thats it thats the post.
> 
> Hi!
> 
> So, I use a few of different languages in this fic, mainly Russian, and I don't always translate it straight away, I have put the translations at the end but if that's too stressful for you I get it!
> 
> Also I took artistic liberties with this, uh SHIELD is still a thing, apparently, because I forgot about TWS, lol, but yeah - artistic expression!
> 
> I love them, okay bye.
> 
> oh! title is from Violet Hill by Coldplay - a truly beautiful song.

It’s an overcast, dismally grey Thursday morning when Barnes rings her cell for the first time. Natasha tells herself that she definitely, absolutely, categorically should’ve been expecting it, he’d been out of debrief for weeks - and he said he would, for Christ’s sake! She still looks at her phone like its sprouting human appendages, though, but only for the span of about five rings or so – at which point she snatches the device up from the coffee table, knocking over a stack of unread magazines in the process, sending them flying across the hardwood in several directions (if she had a cat, she was sure this would be the moment it hopped down from whatever perch it had claimed, and proceeded to sink its claws into the magazines, ripping them to shreds. She didn’t have a cat, however, so no such thing happened, but all this was beyond the point in hand. Ha.). She presses answer with much more force than could ever possibly be needed, psyching herself up for what she was certain was going to be the most awkward conversation in her 30 (_ seventy-two _) years of life. 

“Romanoff” 

Her eyes were scrunched shut, and remained so while she heard him breathe down the line, short and ragged, like he’d been for a run. 

“_Natalia- _ ” his voice was deeper than she remembered, and oh she remembered him often . She took an inhale as he spoke again. “_I remember everything, Natalia, all of it, I remember all of it. _” 

\- 

_ Natalia turns thirteen in the early winter of 1956. She knows it is winter, because she can remember the snow on her pillowcase the morning that they take her for her _ _ ‘ _ _ present _ _ ’ _ _ . Not that the snow was an obvious telling of the seasons, there would be snow on her pillowcase from early September to as late as May the next year – (as to the reason why the snow would fall on her pillowcase instead of the roof had entirely to do with the smashed glass of the rectangular window behind the bars above her bed. It had been smashed when she arrived, she did not ask why, she was not told, and it was not fixed). _

_ So, no way to be sure it was winter, yet she always thought of it as v __glukhuyu __zimnyuyu __poru__, looking back.__T__he dead of winter. __T__he snow was always fluffier in the wintertime. _ _ It was fluffy that morning. _

_ Whatever she’d been expecting for a present, it was certainly not a person, a man at that. A very tall man, with an arm that glared in the reflected snow and an accent that didn’t quite curl at the edges like it should. She felt as if she should be frightened, initially__, __she was __not. _

_ It had to be winter, see, because they – Petrovitch and Matron, that was, - they called him __Zimniy __Soldat__, the Winter Soldier. And, it fit. She remembers her hands were cold, and that the air around him was freezing almost, like he was __a sculpture __made of ice. __And when he looks at her, his eyes are the colour of the sky out the window – frosty blue, and when he lands his first punch, her whole-body shivers from _ _ the impact _ _ . _

_ She thinks it makes sense, at the time, but she is thirteen and naïv__e - _ _ not when it comes to killing people without blinking _ _ \- _ _ but naïve all the same. She justifies to herself that it must make sense, later on when she is lying in bed, fresh snow falling, and melting, on the bruise blooming across her left side – it is winter, so he is here, and when the snow is not so fluffy anymore and spring comes, he will go. _

_ N__atalia may be __young and __naïve, but she is not stupid, and most of the time, her assumptions are correct. _

_ She and the soldier train until the snow thins, and then he is gone, melted like the snow on the ground. _

_ \- _

“Have you ever been to Portugal?” 

“_Uma __vez__,” _ she replies, lifting her head from the arm of the sofa and looking over to where Barnes is sitting at the worn kitchen table, she doesn’t meet his eyes, instead watching his hand on the table, it flexes and then moves to his leg. 

Down the corridor a door shuts, and Natasha hears heavy footsteps down the corridor. Her eyes flick to the clock on the wall and then to the barred window, where a larger shadow passes and – keeps on walking down the corridor. She drops her shoulders, relaxed again and turns back to Barnes. Honestly, she’s more jittery than he is, and he’s the one being kept locked in a room day in day out. 

“-_ há __muito __tempo,_” and then in English, “- why do you ask?” 

He stares at her for a moment or two, and then. 

“I remember a promenade, and there were these donut things, with icing – _cavacas__, _that’s what they were called!” 

She flips a page in her magazine, skimming the paragraph with a forced air of boredom as she replies. 

“Lisbon, I was eighteen, we were sent to kill the representative for Portugal at the UN, he’d been sticking his nose in some very shady KGB flavoured corners,” 

“Huh,” she looks up again, and catches the moment when his brain ticks over and catches up, the memory fully unlocking itself. He's remembering small things, but there are obvious memory blocks over a lot of it, thick ice that shows no sign of cracking - for example, he still had little clue to who the hell she was most of the time. He nods, and leans back against the wall. 

“_Onde __aprendi __a __falar __português__, de __qualquer __maneira__? _” 

She smiles at him and his atrocious accent, shaking her head a little and continuing to flick through her magazine. 

“_Au __même_ _endroit __où __tu __as __appris __à __parler __français__, mon __chéri _” 

“No kiddin’, they taught me Portuguese in the army? Damn, I must’ve forgotten more than I thought.” 

She laughs so hard at the shit-eating grin on his face that the guard posted outside has to come in and escort her out for ‘inappropriate behaviour’ as if lounging round reading _OK__! _ magazine was what she was supposed to be doing in the first place, not debriefing him as Fury had explicitly order- oh who cares? She’d been bullshitting her paperwork for years, what’s one more. (She ignores the blatant nagging in the back of her mind, _there goes another new year’s resolution, _while simultaneously ignoring the fact the nagging voice in her mind sounds awfully similar to one Steve Rogers). 

It takes her until she gets home before she realises, she’d let her guard down around him, for the first time since she’d seen him again, and then realises, with an overwhelming sinking feeling, that it had felt utterly natural. 

\- 

_ There__’__s blood everywhere. __On the sheets, on her clothes, splattered on the bathroom tiles. T__his is not what is bothering Natalia, she is used to blood. __W__hat is bot__h__ering her__, __is that most of it is her blood, stemming from a nasty cut running from under her left armpit to the back of her right hip. __I__t’s not too deep, luckily, otherwise she would probably be in a lot more trouble, paralysed style. _

_ T__his thought is not comforting to her. _

_ I__t is her seventeenth winter, and she is in __P__aris, in a shabby hotel somewhere off a back alley in the 2__nd __arrondissement__. __T__oday could be her b__ir__t__h__day, for all she knows. __T__he snowflakes that are falling outside the windowpane are __certainly __fluffy enough, and he is with her, so it must be close. _

_ S__he caught a glance at a newspaper earlier __that day__, while they were on their way to the restaurant that their target was at, and in the top left corner it had said __D__écembre __23__rd__. She runs the date over in her mind, and decides that yes, she likes this date for her birthday. __S__he must say this out loud at some point, because the soldier tells her to be quiet from where he is kneeling over her, stitching up her wound. __S__he supposes it’s the morphine talking, a luxury she is not usually afforded. _

_ T__he morphine speaks again. _

_ “__Kogda __u vas den'__rozhdeniya__, __soldat _ _ ?” _

_ He sighs, impatient, she feels a sharp tug of pressure in her lower back as he tightens the thread. _

_ “En __Francias__, __vdova__, __tu __devez __pratiquer __votre __pronunciation,” she shivers a little when he moves away from her back, and she hears the tap run at the little sink in the corner of the room. _

_ “ _ _ D’accord __– quelle __est __la date de ton __anniversaire__?” _

_ “Je ne __sais__ pas,” he’s silent for a few moments, and she moves to turn her head to look at him, but stops when a shooting pain runs down her back, he drops a kiss to the back of her head and falls down beside her, his shirt hanging off the chair by the window. _ _ T__he snow was still falling. “-je __pense __que – que je __n'en __ai pas,” _

_ It__’__s easier to meet his gaze now, to see how his eyes have fogged, like the cracked pane of the window. _

_ “__M__oi __aussi__, __soldat__, nous __sommes__ les __mêmes,_ _oui__?” _

_ Hi__s hand is pushing back the hair from her face, and he always makes her feel like such a child. __A __child __caught __in a snowstorm. __S__he hates herself for it, that __underneath it all, __she can’t be anything but a child to him, the same naïve thirteen _ _ -year- _ _ old he met in the wintertime. _

_ “Non, __ma __ange __déchu__, nous __sommes __très __différents __les __uns __des __autres__,” _

_ Natalia passes out before she can reply. _

_ S__he doesn’t understand how they could be so different, she and him, thought they were kindred spirits caught in a blizzard together. __P__erhaps she is more naïve than she thought she was. _

_ S__he dreams more vividly than she has in years, yet when she wakes, all she can remember is the __soldat __repeating __desyatoye __marta– again and again like a prayer, clear as day. __D__esyatoye marta, tenth of March. _

_ She does not ask him what it means, and it is forgotten by the time the snow stops falling. _

_ \- _

When they first bring him in, he’s under for what feels like years in the hospital. Steve stays by his side every second, predictably, but Natasha can’t stand hospitals in the best circumstances, so she tends to spend a few hours every other day or so keeping Steve company. She’s seen Sam wandering up and down the corridor a few times too, usually with some sort of hot beverage or vending machine snack. 

When the ten-day mark hits, and Steve still hasn’t been home to shower, or slept properly, she calls time out on leaving him to it, and hosts an intervention, of sorts. 

By intervention, she means trying her best to herd him back to his apartment for a shower, or at least a nap, preferably a shower – for everyone’s sake, really. 

As she approaches Barnes’ room, she hears the familiar crackling sound of Steve’s grammarphone, whatever record he’d been playing had obviously ended, but when she enters the room, Steve’s making no move to turn it off. She thinks he must be asleep, he’s sitting so still, so she moves around the room silently, shutting off the grammarphone and tiding up any clutter that had acclimatised in the day or so she’d been gone. 

She doesn’t look at Barnes, not properly, so it makes sense that she starts a little when she does. 

His hair has been cut. 

The cuts on his face and neck have mostly healed, too, resulting in him appearing about 27 or so. Or at least so much younger than she ever remembered him looking. He still hasn’t woken up yet, but they’ve propped him up, and covered his left arm with a blanket. 

She approaches him, cautiously, throwing a glance to Steve who is, like she expected, passed out, leaning against his fist. Her hand reaches out before she can think, and she’s pushing back Barnes’ hair from his forehead and tracing a line down from his temple to his jaw. His eyelids flutter a little, and she draws her hand back, realising how cold her fingertips must be from the November air. 

Her eyes drop to the blanket, and she’s pulling back the top corner before she can blink. It looks the same, the glare almost blinding in the clinical harshness of the hospital lights. She traces the red star on his shoulder softly, and inhales sharply at the feel of the cold metal against the pad of her forefinger. She snatches her hand back and pulls the blanket back up, putting on her warmest smile when Steve’s breathing shifts and he wakes. 

“Hey there, sleeping beauty” she turns to her bag, pulling out the water, blueberry muffin and the mountain of protein bars she’d bought for him, guessing that he had probably forgotten to eat for the last ten days. He needed a proper, hot, meal, but this was a good as any place to start. She hands him the water and 3 protein bars, putting on her best stern face when he regards the bar disdainfully 

“Hey, Nat – thanks for the supplies,” he waves the water bottle by his head, smiling weakly, before looking at the man lying in the bed next to him and sighing, running a hand through his hair. 

“How are you holdin’ up, cap?” 

He sighs again, and she almost can’t bear to look at him and all the obvious pain he’s in. She sits on the bench seat by the window, the one running parallel to the bed. 

“I’ve been better, I’ve been much worse,” he chuckles through a yawn, dropping a wrapper in the bin behind him, “I could still think he’s dead, for one thing,” 

She doesn’t reply straight away, watching him for a moment in silence, calculating her next move. 

“No chance of you going home and having a hot meal and a shower, then?” 

“Not a single chance in hell, Romanoff,” he meets her gaze, his eyes are bloodshot, it throws her off balance a little. “I’m not leaving him to wake up without me here,” 

She nods, deciding that right now was not the time to be stubborn. She pushes herself right against the far wall of the bench, curving her legs up and behind her, and pats the spot next to her invitingly. 

“At least try and have a proper sleep then, I promise to wake you at the slightest movement from Barnes,” 

He looks at Barnes for a moment, then the bench, swallows, and then stands up, walking over to her stiffly. He lies on his side, and she manoeuvres him until his head is resting in her lap, his own legs curled up in the limited space. 

“Thank you, Natasha,” 

She runs her hands through his hair gently, as greasy as it is, and his breath evens out in minutes. She evens out her own breathing to match his, relaxing her shoulders back. She keeps one hand in his hair, curling around the strands, and the other picks up her e-reader. 

She’d been reading for an hour or so when the air shifts in the room, she flicks her eyes up immediately and sees Barnes with his eyes open, watching her curiously. She takes a shaky breath, and goes to wake Steve. 

“Wait! -” she freezes, her hand still curled in his hair. She relaxes after a moment, and though he shifts a little, Steve remains asleep. When she looks up Barnes is watching him, eyes wide, he swallows. “- he looks tired.” 

She nods, but stays silent, trying to gage how much he does or doesn’t know, how stable he is. 

“Where am I?” 

“New York” 

She hates how shaky her voice sounds, and clenches the hand not resting in Steve’s hair, the nails pinching into her skin. 

“Oh, right,” his eyes flick to the window, and he nods, “- and who are you?” 

_ Ouch _

_ “ _ A friend of Steve’s. _ ” _

He swallows again, watching her sceptically for a moment, eyes narrowed, before nodding, regarding her and Steve’s position. He smiles at her, boyish and sincere, her breath catches. 

“Well, any friend of Stevie’s, is a friend of mine,” 

Steve wakes up then, and then it’s a flurry of nurses and hugs and apologies that were never needed between the two of them, but are said anyway. Natasha turns her head away and looks out the window, snow had begun to fall at some point, and it was beginning to stick to the pavements, the flakes large and fluffy. 

She does not visit him again. 

\- 

_ The year she turns sixteen, the soldier kisses her for the first time. __Granted, __the first time __it was to keep a cover, and granted he probably (defini__tel__y) wouldn’t have done it if the cover hadn’t required it, but he did, and it is her first kiss__, (and then her second, and third, and …) _ _ . _

_ Or at least she decides to count it as her first kiss, purely because she does not want to count the __50__-year-__old __man she had been forced to kiss when she was fourteen. No, she thinks that the __soldat __is a much better choice, much nicer to look back on, too. _

_ He is gentle with her, gentle in a way she has only seen once or tw__ic__e from him, usually at the end of a training season – right before the snow stops and he leaves for the s__pring__. The ice behind his eyes has generally melted by th__at __point, and he can__’__t go as long without getting headaches – but he always comes back __with the snowstorm__, so she doesn’t let herself linger on it __any __longer than __necessary _ _ . _

_ Anyway, they are in Stalingrad, (__V__olgograd, now, but to them it will always be __S__talingrad. Their city.) and they have been tasked with killing the foreign minister of all people, a fat, __greasy __looking man of about 60, Vladimir Mikhailov. _

_ Of course__, __they kill him in about a third of the time they’d been given, but t__hen th__ey were the best the Red Room had to offer. Poison, minimal enough to burn through his system, but make him drowsy enough for __N__atalia to slit his throat. _

_ O__stavit' __preduprezhdeniye__, Petrovitch had said. Leave a warning. She does what he asks, leaves it in Mikhailov’s blood across the wall of his hotel room. _

_ They're leaving the hotel when the secret service shows up. That's the issue with killing well known politicians, the government get involved. The second issue was of course, that both Natalia and the _ _ soldat __are familiar faces within the government, even with their disguises - (a darker hair colour for Natalia and __a __new haircut f__or the __soldat _ _ ). One second they are clear and the next they are most certainly not clear, so he kisses her. He kisses her right there in the hotel lobby, over by the lifts, and the agents run past them without so much as a second glance. _

_ When he pulls back his grin is young and boyish, exhil__a__rated, she can__’__t help but mirror him, allo__w__ing herself to be dragged by him outside and down the streets until they reach the square outside the panor _ _ a _ _ ma museum. It's dark out now, and their laughter carries down back alleys through the wind. There are other couples here too, in wool _ _ l _ _ en hats and thick boots, v __glukhuyu __zimnyuyu __poru __indeed. _

_ When they stop, it__’__s abru__p__t, and she almost crashes into him__, __but he turns at the last minute and catches her arms. Their grins are still mirrored, and she thinks his eyes are the clearest she’s ever seen them, like the melted glacier at the top of the mountains behind the mansion. Bright blue and perfectly pure. _

_ His right hand, the hand that is warm and real and clasped in her own just a moment beforehand, is stroking her hair, chasing the ringlets down the side of her face. _

_ She blinks when the snowflakes start to fall, hitting her eyelashes. She laughs again, feeling lighter than she __ev__e__r __has before, she even contemplates sticking her tongue out to catch the snowflakes, but she is not a child, so she decides against it. _

_ Suddenly his thumb is no long tracing her hair, but instead her lips, his fingers framing her jaw. He searches her eyes for a minute, and when he meets no protests, he leans down and he kisses her again. Not for the cover, but for himself__, or maybe for her__. __It doesn’t matter. __His lips are cold, from the snow, and he tastes faintly of vodka, she thinks to herself that he tastes like home, if that was a thing. Natalia lets him take and take, giving herself over to him eagerly, and boy does he take, swallowing down her gasps and drawing __h__er closer, one arm wrapped firmly around her wa__ist__, the other still clutching the side of her face. _

_ When he pulls away__ from her it’s with sheer force of will on his end, __he __brings up his other arm and __clutches __her face with both hands, the metal of his left hand __ca__usi__ng __her to shiver, forcing her eyes to meet his. _

_ “You cannot tell anyone about this, __kroshka__, no one but us can ever know about this__, or it all disappears __\- __ponimayu _ _ ?” _

_ His voice is gravelly, and she knows there will be bruises when he pulls his hands away. _

_ “Da, soldat,” _

_ She must look frightened, as he loosens his grip and drops a kiss on her forehead. _

_ “__K__horoshaya devushka, good girl,” _

_ She obeys him, and doesn’t tell a soul, not even Matron, certainly not Petrovitch. He doesn’t kiss her again, barely even looks at her, at least not until the snow falls the next year and they are out of the country on a mission, further away from the eyes and the ears of Department X. _

_ \- _

_ “Promise me this is real,” _

_ London. She’s eighteen, or maybe seventeen, she’s never sure these days. _

_ “Promise,” _

_ A beat of silence, then - “-you’re the only thing that’s real, I think,” _

_ \- _

When he’s been discharged from the hospital, and Steve had double, triple, quadruple checked that his injuries are healed, they move Barnes to a S.H.I.E.L.D facility north of the city for his debriefing – the same they had for Natasha. 

She was kept there for 3 months, and she says kept because being at the S.H.I.E.L.D facility was very much what she imagined being a house cat was like. Kept in a room with minimal stimulation, of any kind, waiting for visits from humans to deposit food and adequate attention before leaving again. Natasha had always thought she wouldn’t mind if she was bought back as a cat, but those 3 months had changed her mind pretty stat, domesticated living was not on her rebirth agenda, thank you very much. 

Anyway, Barnes is moved to the S.H.I.E.L.D facility, and Natasha follows at a distance. She knows her proximity is dangerous, especially the more coherent he gets. He gets this look, where she thinks that he must’ve remembered her, that he’s remembered all of it, but then it’s gone just as quickly and his eyes are just sliding over her like she’s a piece of wallpaper. 

It takes almost a month for her to work up the courage to visit him, and when she does, the look is back. 

She slips into his room silently, like a shadow in the night – it doesn’t matter, he’s already sitting there waiting for her. 

“I know you, don’t I?” 

She feigns indifference, trying to project the body language of a, you guessed it, indifferent person. 

“We met at the hospital – my name is Agent Romanoff - Steve’s..., I’m Steve’s friend,” 

He doesn’t buy it; this she can tell straight away. She drops the act, screw indifference. 

“No - I mean before, you don’t forget hair like that in a hurry, I knew you before,” 

She remains silent, breathing heavily. This is it, the make or break moment, he’ll either remember it all and fall at her feet, or remember it all and snap her neck. 

Or, Option C. 

“Your name is Natalia, is it not?” 

She nods, almost minutely. He smiles. It does not reach his eyes, her stomach drops. 

“It’s like trying to pick up a thread in a dark room,” he drops his head in his hands, laughing sardonically, the metal on his left side glares in the harsh lighting. “I catch one thing, go to follow it, and it disappears, melts away like snow in the spring,” 

She shuts her eyes and sighs, willing herself not to scream. 

Option C: he does not remember. 

_ ( _ _ I remember everything, Natalia, all of it _ _ ) _

“I wouldn’t worry, Sergeant Barnes, your memories will return in due course, I’m sure.” 

His eyebrows furrow at the title, and she has to swallow the slightly acidic taste in her own mouth at using it. It feels _ wrong. _ (He was always _soldat _and then, only in the dark of hotel rooms at the end of a season when the ice had melted, he was James – but only at the end, never before. Calling him James at the start of the season resulted in finger shaped bruises around her neck.) The corner of his mouth lifts up into a smirk of sorts, and she clenches her hand into a fist behind her back. 

“That’s exactly what I'm worried about, _Agent Romanoff” _

She could throw up, truly. She feels the bile rise up her throat, and her palm must be bleeding from the amount of pressure she’s using to push her nails into it. She hates it, hates how his mouth curves around the words, how his Brooklyn accent is creeping back in. She wants to hear him speak Russian, to shut her eyes and listen. Listen to the accent that was never quite fluid enough – huh, guess that makes sense now, all things considered. It was never his first language. At least, it was never Barnes’ first language, the _soldat _is another matter entirely. A redundant matter now, she supposes. 

There's a clock somewhere, and it was ticking too loud. Natasha opens her eyes, takes one look at his blue ones across the room – _ like a __Febru__ary morning - _ and bolts. Right out the door, down the corridor, past Steve with a muttered apology and a squeeze on the wrist that means_ I’ll tell you later _and all the way to her apartment in upper Manhattan – at which point she promptly has a breakdown that lasts 2 days. At least it lasts until Steve forcibly breaks in and tempts her out from under the covers with strawberry cheesecake ice cream and both volumes of Kill Bill on DVD. She never could resist strawberry cheesecake or Uma Thurman, anyhow, so she figures no one can judge her for it. Steve certainly doesn’t, doesn’t ask any questions either, and god she loves him for it – his no questions asked attitude. 

She doesn’t visit the facility again for another week, and only does then because Fury all but forces her, and then she makes sure to always bring distraction in the form of a magazine or a book so she can’t focus on how _wrong _it all feels. 

\- 

_ It's the middle of the night – the somewhere-in-between hours before the light ticks over into the orange of the next morning. Natalia opens her eyes, and it is deep, deep blue outside the window. _

_ The __soldat __shifts underneath her, his face buried in her neck, mouthing kisses into the juncture of her jaw. She smiles, turning to _ _ her head to _ _ face him. It is the last mission of the season, but somehow it feels more final that that. He looks at her with such sad _ _ ness behind his _ _ eyes, and he touches her like he’s saying goodbye. She wishes she could grab him round the face and scream at him ‘I’m nineteen, I am no longer a child!’ until he understood. She doesn’t do it though, just whispers into the deep, deep blue instead. _

_ “__Ya __dumayu__, __chto __ya __tebya __lyublyu__, __soldat _ _ ,” _

_ She doesn’t think, she knows. _

_ “Say it again, but call me James,” _

_ He speaks in English with the funniest accent she’s ever heard, she replies in all the languages her mind supplies, calling him James again and again until the blue outside turns to pink and then to red. _

_ In the morning, their handlers come for them. She never sees her James again, and the next season the snow never melts and the ice is thicker than ever. _

_ She wonders why they never punish her, but realises that putting him right in front of her, and have him choke the life out of her when she messes up a verb tense, and never come and kiss it better later is the worst form of punishment. _

_ There are still icicles on the inside of her window when May comes around and he leaves. She is not there to see him return. _

_ She sees him once again before the fall of the KGB. It is 1990, and there is a blizzard in Moscow, and while running from the hotel where her target is hanging from the ceiling fan, she catches a glimpse of silver at the end of the street, where a large man in a baseball cap turns the corner. He does not look back. _

_ The next time she sees him is almost twenty years later, but she remains, visually, the exact same as she has since 1961, as does he. The snow is the heaviest it’s been in Odessa for years, and when he shoots her engineer, straight through her own torso, she thinks back to how the snowflakes used to fall on her pillowcase right before she met him. She sneaks out of _ _ the hospital _ _ bed that night to open the window, and lets the snow pour in. _

_ \- _

(“Your hair,” he says, reaching out to wrap a strand around his finger, rubbing his thumb over it as if trying to wipe off the colour, “-it looked like blood, in the snow, like a halo of blood”) 

\- 

_ “ _ _ N__e zabyvay __menya__, __pozhaluysta__, _ _ ” _

_ She whispers so quietly _ _ that _ _ she is sure he does not hear her __under the wind thrashing against the window panes _ _ . _

_ “__Nikogda” _

_ \- _

Natasha decides to walk the twenty minutes to Steve’s, when Barnes has hung up the phone, figures the fresh air will do her racing mind some good. 

All it does is make her cold, in the end, but she relishes in the little clouds her breath makes in the air, and shoves her hands under her armpits to stop them from cramping. It ends up taking her half an hour, due to her dawdling, stopping to stare into shop windows she usually has zero interest in whatsoever, and debating whether or not to get a hot chocolate, despite knowing the sugar in it gives her migraines. Doesn’t stop her from thinking about it though, and stopping outside of _three _Starbucks, no less, before making her mind up. 

She doesn’t expect to see him straight away, which is her first mistake, really. All the hours of thinking about how this moment would pan out, and in not one of them did she get caught short, which was stupid, in retrospect_ . _

She turns the corner onto Steve’s street, and is caught short, to nobody’s surprise but her own, funnily enough. He’s leaning against the lamppost outside their building, his own arms crossed under his jacket, mirroring her own position. Huh, she’d forgotten she’d picked that up from him, fate has a sense of irony, then. Her hands twitch under her coat, wanting to move, but she keeps them right where they are, the spark of amusement in his eyes sending a wave of anticipation crackling down her spine. 

She walks towards him slowly, trying her best to calm her racing heartbeat, or at least appear as if that’s true – that, she can do. The former? Well, that’s unrelated, really. The clouds of her breath were obscuring his face every time she exhaled, and each time he came back into focus, a few steps closer, she felt more and more like a teenager, like each step peeled decades off of her exterior. 

Natasha walked until she was right in front of him, then stops. She pulls her jacket around her tighter, suppressing a shiver as his icy blue eyes scan her body, his upper half still leaning back. He was looking at her like it was the first time, again, and she feels her stomach sink a little. _I__ remember it all, Natalia. _

“Your eyes are always so green; did you know that?” she shakes her head a little, and he smiles, reminiscent and fond, “-it was one of the first things I remembered, the colour of your eyes.” 

She's shivering, she realises, and not just from the cold. He reaches out to her, one hand on her elbow. She tightens for a moment, but he doesn’t move away, moves closer instead. he stands up straighter, takes a step forwards and tightens his grip. She nods jerkily at his silent question, and follows the pull of his arms to fold herself into him, arms tight around his waist and her face pressed against his chest, his heartbeat loud and steady in her ear. 

Natasha shuts her eyes, and it’s like no time has passed, and she’s still_ vdova_, and he’s still _s__oldat__, _and they could be anywhere. A Metro station in Paris, a deserted square in Vienna, a busy high street in Kiev. It all blurs in her head, the press of his left arm against her back and the touch of his lips to her head, it makes her forget where she is for a moment. For a moment she feels nothing at all, just weightlessness, and then it’s like she’s falling six-hundred feet, and she’s hit with a wave of nausea. It’s his voice that brings her back to earth in the end, no surprise there. She can feel the vibrations of what he’s saying against her cheek and turns her head to look up at him. 

“Through it all, you were the only good thing.” 

His hands were cradling her face, and she feels she’s still falling, down the proverbial rabbit hole, only faster now. She smiles, uncertain and a little unsteady, and she’s vaguely aware of the snow falling around them. A laugh bubbles up past her lips, his eyebrows furrow. She cups her hand, laughing fully and much louder. 

“You always came back with the snow – do you remember?” 

His expression clears and a grin takes over his face, she sticks her tongue out to catch a few of the fresh flakes, and when she opens her eyes, he’s watching her, his expression regretful, unsure even. Down the street a young child shrieks in delight, so loud she almost doesn’t catch his whisper. 

“Ya lyublyu tebya, I’m sorry Natalia, for all of it, Ya lyublyu tebya,” 

She thinks about running, for a second, but she remains frozen, her hand still cupped in front of her, collecting the snow. She looks down and see the flakes piling up in her palm, fluffier than she’d seen in years, turning the skin of her hand pink. _ This is real. _ She lets out a shaky breath, brushing her hand on her jeans and smiling at him, wide and child-like. 

“Idiot, darling man,” she whispered, cupping the sides of his face and pushing herself up onto her tip toes, “I’ve loved you for 74 years, I will love you for 74 more,” 

He kisses her as if he’d never left, and she kisses like she’s nineteen again. 

She pulls back after a what could be seconds or months or years and laughs, a little sharply to her own ears, but his arms remain tight around her, tighten a little, even. 

“I don’t know what to call you – you were always just _soldat _,” 

She’s lying, of course, if he truly remembers it all, then he’ll know she’s lying. It’s a test, and he passes with flying colours, of course. He doesn’t call her out on her lie like she thinks he might, which surprises her enough to keep her silent long enough for him to think about it. 

“James,” his eyes soften and his hands are cradling her face tighter, the metal of his left hand sending a familiar, welcome shiver down her right side, “-call me James,” 

\- 

**Author's Note:**

> ‘V glukhuyu zimnyuyu poru’ – the dead of winter, an idiom 
> 
> Zimniy soldat – The Winter Soldier 
> 
> ‘Uma vez, há muito tempo’ – ‘Once, a long time ago’ 
> 
> Cavacas – Portuguese donuts 
> 
> ‘Onde aprendi a falar português, de qualquer maneira’ – ‘Where did I learn to speak Portuguese, anyway?’ 
> 
> ‘Au même endroit où tu as appris à parler français, mon chéri’ – ‘The same place where you learned to speak French, my darling 
> 
> ‘Kogda u vas den' rozhdeniya, soldat’ – ‘when is your birthday, soldier?’ 
> 
> ‘En Francias, vdova, tu devez pratiquer votre pronunciation’ – ‘In French, Widow (Russian), you must practise your pronunciation’ 
> 
> ‘D’accord – quelle est la date de ton anniversaire’ – ‘Okay, when is your birthday?’ 
> 
> ‘Je ne sais pas’ – ‘I don’t know’ 
> 
> ‘Je pense que je n'en ai pas’ – ‘I think that I do not have one’ 
> 
> ‘Moi aussi, soldat, nous sommes les mêmes, oui?’ – ‘Me too, soldier, we are the same, yes?’ 
> 
> ‘Non, ma ange déchu, nous sommes très différents les uns des autres,’ – ‘No, my fallen angel, we are very different from each other,’ 
> 
> ‘Kroshka’ - Little One 
> 
> ‘Ponimayu?’- ‘Understand?’ 
> 
> ‘Ya dumayu, chto ya tebya lyublyu’ - ‘I think I love you’ 
> 
> ‘Ne zabyvay menya, pozhaluysta’ - ‘Do not forget me, please’ 
> 
> ‘Nikogda' - ‘Never’ 
> 
> ‘Ya lyublyu tebya’ - ‘I love you’


End file.
